The Fiend's Creation System

The Forgotten

Julius woke up with a throbbing pain in his head. The memories, feelings, and sentiments of Eisha, his maid, were flowing into his mind.

He couldn’t get up but the memories and feelings, especially the moments when her maid had jumped in the way of the numerous blades that were aiming at him, made Julius understand the hopes and wishes that Eisha had for him.

The feeling of despair and regret when she was on her last breaths...he also felt it..all of it. She wanted to see him grow up to become a great leader, a great Emperor. Unfortunately, the gods didn’t grant her wish.

“But I***, we*”

[**** grant her wish.]

The voice in his head finished his sentence, he shook his head a little and blinked his eyes.

[Name: Eisha

Race: Human

Condition: Critically wounded

Status: Repairing]

Julius thought he was hallucinating because of the transparent screen floating in front of his eyes. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The screen had disappeared and he shook his head.

‘I lost too much blood...I’m probably delusional right now…’

“...Scan my body… and begin healing…”

[Body scan commencing…]

[Multiple fractured ribs. Broken right femur and ulna. Lightly pierced abdomen and chest. The body’s left flank has experienced huge trauma near the stomach and*]

“Enough, just start healing it!” Julius yelled. 

His body was in extreme pain but with his new powers, he was certain that it could be easily healed. 

[Repairing body… Insufficient resources. A large intake of food is required to conduct a full-body repair.]

“Dammit...where the hell can I find food in this wasteland…”

Julius tried getting up, but there was just no strength left in his body.

[Using the flesh of this body, would you like to create a Homunculus?]

“...What is that?”

[Info: Homunculus, the Forgotten’s basic workforce. Has the ability to create buildings, gather resources, and provide sustenance.]

“Urgh…I don’t care, just make them!”

After Julius said those words, pieces of his flesh and blood began separating from his body in the most gruesome manner. The pain was almost unbearable for him but Julius gritted his teeth and kept himself conscious.

[Homunculus created.]

After hearing that, Julius then heard a monotone voice greet him from the side.

“What is your command, Lord?”

“...?”

A naked ‘human’ was standing over him and Julius just stared back at this ‘person’ with a confused look.

“Are you the Homunculus?”

“Yes, that is indeed I,” The man...or woman, replied.

The Homunculus had an androgynous face and voice. It was naked with greyish-white colored skin but Julius couldn’t find the homunculus’s genital or anything that could distinguish its gender.

The homunculus’s face also greatly resembles his and it was quite odd to look at. It was like he was staring at a clone of himself. The Homunculus’s face was emotionless and there was a sense of…’death’ about it.

From Julius’s perspective, it was as if the Homunculus wasn’t alive at all. He got that kind of feeling as he looked deep into the Homunculus’s eyes which were staring back at him from above.

Julius quickly shook his head and commanded, “Quickly...bring me some food… I need food…”

“Command received. Commencing search and acquisition of any nearby food sources.”

The Homunculus turned around and began walking away. The way it talked was stiff and robotic. It gave Julius a weird feeling. 

Unfortunately for him, his body’s condition was slowly deteriorating. If he couldn’t get any food in the next half hour, he was going to die. He was only able to stay alive right now because of the power he had acquired and the emergency life support it provided.

He didn’t understand what this power was, but once he got better, Julius promised himself that he’d look into it.

After waiting for nearly 30 minutes, the homunculus that he created still hadn’t returned. Julius was beginning to curse inwardly at the unreliable words of the voice in his head. If he was going to die, it would have been better if he just died without hoping for anything.

“Damned thing...Am I really going to die here?”

Julius looked around and soon saw the flesh sac that was housing his maid. If the voice in his head’s words were true then Eisha would be saved. That was all that mattered to him right now, but then, after she was saved, Julius wondered how the maid would survive in this wasteland, alone.

“...Well, at least she’ll have a future…” Julius sighed. He could slowly feel his life coming to an end, but suddenly, he felt some vibrations on the ground.

The vibrations got closer until it stopped just a short distance away from him.

“Sustenance acquired.”

“!”

The homunculus had finally come back and in its arms...was a nearly dried cactus.

“...what the f**k…”

“Commencing transfer of energy to the king.”

The homunculus’s arm began changing and it formed some creepy, fleshy-looking tube.

“What the*!”

It was such a grotesque transformation that nearly caused Julius to curse out. Unfortunately for him, before he could even say anything, the Homunculus placed the transformed arm over his mouth and some kind of fluid began flowing into his mouth.

The taste was abominable but the voice in his head kept him from throwing up the liquid.

[Sustenance acquired. Commencing full-body repair.]

A magical spectacle occurred in the next moment. Although Julius couldn’t see it, he could feel that his body was slowly being repaired. The opened wounds were closing as his flesh began reconstructing itself.

His bones snapped back into place before they regrew and reconnected themselves. It felt refreshing and good but at the same time slightly painful and exhausting.

[Repair complete]

He didn’t know why, but at the end of the ‘repair’, Julius felt like he had just finished running a marathon. 

“Ugh, get this thing off me,” Julius quickly pushed away the homunculus who had finished doing its task.

He wanted to retch but noticed something. The Homunculus seemed a bit smaller compared to the first time he saw it.

“Did you...shrink?”

“Due to the conversion of matter into energy and the insufficiency of the matter to provide enough nutrition, the supplemented elements were shouldered by this body…”

After hearing that, Julius had the urge to retch even more. The cactus from earlier was the ‘matter’ that he deduced was supposed to be used to provide him with enough energy to complete the healing but since it was nearly dead and couldn’t provide him enough energy, the homunculus supplemented that with its own body.

“Dammit, no wonder it tasted so disgusting…”

He wanted to throw it all back up but there was nothing left inside his stomach to throw up. It had all turned into nutrients that helped him repair his body so it was basically a part of him now. Thinking about it caused shivers to rush up and down his spine.

Julius reeled in his disgust before taking a look at his surroundings. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was a vast expanse of brown. There was no change in color for as far as he could see.

“How did I fall into this wasteland…”

Julius thought back to what happened prior to him waking up. He was supposed to be attending his coming-of-age ceremony and inducted as crown prince by his father, but what he remembered…

“That’s right...my half-brother, Caine, and the royal knights’ general, Maximilian, staged a coup...and killed the Emperor…”

The public’s dissent was at an all-time high when they knew that the Emperor was proceeding with the plans to make him the crown prince and the successor of his throne. His half-brother, Caine, was a good schemer and with his mother, the royal concubine, planned and staged the coup during his coming-of-age ceremony.

“That bastard Maximilian...some loyal knight he was...he killed father with his own blade…”

Remembering the moment when the Royal Knight General stepped forward and suddenly stabbed the sword through his father’s chest...it caused his blood to boil. Even though he somewhat hated his father for letting him live such a wretched and secluded life, the man was still his father.

“Even if it’s not for my father, I’ll do it for myself...I’ll find my way back and take that bastard’s head, and as for my brother…”

Julius was rather caring for his family. Even though his half-brother had betrayed him and even sentenced him to death, Julius couldn’t bring himself to resent Caine. “It must have been frustrating for him to see me ascend and not him...but to think he ordered for that traitorous bastard to kill father…” It was an unforgivable sin that caused Julius to sigh in exasperation. 

Julius could care less that his title was forcefully taken away from him. He didn’t like the people in his Ephalerith Empire who likewise disliked him. Even if he did come back, it was only to take General Maximilian’s head. It wasn’t like he was going to let this transgression go, but he just didn’t know what he should do to punish his own sibling.

“Before I even think about that, I should first figure out where I am…”

[Answer: You are in the Shifting Hallows of the Pergurus Continent.]

The answer popped in Julius’s head when he thought about it. It was weird. He could faintly hear some voices in his head but when he concentrated, it would become louder. 

Earlier, he had heard this voice and when he thought about his current location, the voice suddenly grew louder in his mind and it informed him of his location. It was rather... strange.

“Oh yeah, I should find out about*”

[

Status Menu

Creation Menu

Inventory

Resources

Buildings

Denizens

Objectives

]

Julius was surprised to suddenly see a transparent screen pop up in front of him.

“What the hell?”

It was exactly when he thought about looking into his new ‘powers’ that the screen suddenly appeared. He was surprised but he recomposed himself and calmly looked at the screen.

“Is this my power?”

[Correction: This is the manifestation of your power. Your true power is the embodiment of creation for all of the Forgotten]

‘The Forgotten’, he kept hearing this word inside his head and it was the only one that he didn’t have to focus on and would continue to clearly hear. Even now, it was still ringing in a whispering tone in his head over and over again.

Julius also felt something different about himself. When the ‘screen’ appeared in front of him, he felt that his mind had suddenly ‘connected’ to something. He didn’t know what it was exactly but that question was immediately answered right when he thought about it.

[Your mind has connected and is slowly being integrated with the collective consciousness of the Forgotten. It is why you can ‘hear’ all of us.]

“!”

[Do not be afraid, for we… are one.]

After hearing that, images suddenly began appearing inside Julius’s head. There was no splitting headache this time, but the overwhelming emotions that came with the images caused him to hyperventilate. 

Julius was processing the images, information, and emotions that were flowing into his brain. He saw the images as if he was watching a movie or a slideshow. Once he finished processing it all, he clearly felt the connection strengthen between his mind and that unknown thing which referred to itself as the collective consciousness of the Forgotten.

“I-I...what are you?!” Julius yelled.

Julius asked that even though he already knew. The question he should actually be asking was not, ‘what are you’ but ‘what am I’.

[We are the Forgotten. We are the failed experiment of the Ancient One in his attempt to create a race that copied the Fallen. After numerous trials and errors, we were locked up in a sub-dimension hidden far in the deep reaches of space in fear that we would one day become like the Fallen.]

“What’s the Fallen? Nevermind...I know already.”

Julius didn’t need to ask anything for everything was already inside his brain. He only needed to ‘look’ for it and the answers would be presented to him immediately.

The Fallen were a race of space-devouring monsters that move from planet to planet and like a plague, their sole aim and definition of existence were to end all life in the universe. They’re the counterbalance of the universe’s life which is its death.

There were images of the Fallen and they had a grotesque appearance. It was quite a disturbing image so Julius quickly shook it away. However, he remembered that the Forgotten was created in their image, to copy their racial abilities.

“...So you*”

[We.]

“...We...were created in their image?”

[We were created to imitate them so that the Ancient One would have a force that could rival the Fallen’s rate of proliferation.]

“Will I become like one of them in the future?!”

[No, we were only created in the image of their abilities, not appearance.]

“Oh, good...So, this ‘Ancient One’, he failed?”

[Correction: The Ancient One succeeded. You are the fruit of his success. The sole true Forgotten that was successfully spawned into this universe, the Fiend.]

“...”

All the information he needed was already inside his brain. He only needed time to process it. He also acquired the basic know-how of his new abilities and the immediate objective that he needed to fulfill at the moment.

Julius was just about to check out what his abilities could do but the voice in his head suddenly spoke up.

[Update: The hatching is nearly complete.]

“Huh?

Julius then felt something suddenly connect with his mind. He turned to look where the connection was coming from and saw the flesh sac that his maid, Eisha, was in.

“Eisha?”

The flesh sac began pulsating and the faint silhouette he saw inside the sac began struggling all of a sudden. A hand suddenly tore open the flesh sac from the inside and fluids began pouring out. 

When all of the fluids spilled out, Julius moved in closer and saw the body of his maid, still covered inside the flesh sac’s skin.

“Eisha?!”

Julius rushed forward and began tearing away the skin of the flesh sac. When he saw his maid’s familiar face and heard her voice, he nearly broke down in tears.

“Pr...ince?”

“You’re alive! You’re alive, Eisha!”

“...Prince…”